I'm curious to know what are the various methods you guys are using to do this. I recently bought my first iPod (I've had nothing but non-Apple mp3 players up until now), so I guess I can start doing this using iTunes, which is how I assume a lot of you are doing it, but I'm curious what other music services are being used and how you guys (and gals) like them - ya know, pros and cons and all that.

Also, for those of you who use iTunes, how do you, personally, use it? Do you have your entire music collection in your library and only sync up certain artists / albums / playlists / genres to your various mobile devices at any given time, or do you add / remove files from your library as your listening tastes change, syncing the entire library every time you re-sync your device?

Life used to be so simple when I had non-Apple music players - I just dragged and dropped files on and off the things as I wanted to change my mobile listening library. I have a feeling I'm going to miss those days, but maybe not. That's why I'm asking the question, primarily.

Thanks in advance for any comments.

I only use iTunes for Podcasts and putting stuff on my iPod. When i'm listening to music on my computer I use Windows Media Player. I just like the interface and the way it organizes my library better than iTunes does. Even if i'm listening to podcasts on my PC, which is a lot more rare these days, I'll still occasionally just download the mp3 file directly and listen to it via Windows media, or even stream it from the source's website. WMP is also what I use to rip CDs, though their naming convention and source they grab it from can be hit/miss at times, and I actually had to rip the last Skeletonwitch CD with iTunes when WMP couldn't find the info in their database, and i'm far too lazy to insert that shit in manually.

As for when i'm syncing my iPod, I throw everything in my library on there but always have the automatic sync turned off. I like manually adding stuff (music and podcasts alike) myself even if everything in my library is going in. When something's deleted from my iPod, i'll delete it from my PC as well. I'm duplicating efforts but i'm not letting Apple decide what I want and don't want. Plus automatically syncing your iPod fucks things up sometimes when you plug your iPod into someone else's computer. I have a 160 GB ipod and only about 35 GB of music, so keeping everything on there is not an issue since I never know when i'm in the mood for something I haven't listened to in a long time.

EDIT: should probably mention that when I say "Manually" add stuff, I'm not dragging each individual song or anything. I'm just clicking Autofill. I just mean I don't have it automatically sync up. I probably clarified that for nothing but whatever.